Defending champion Blayne Streeper was disqualified from today's final heat of the Fur Rendezvous World Championship Sled Dog Race following an incident on Cordova Street hill during yesterday's race in which he appeared to have struck and cursed at another musher while their teams were passing.
To see video of the alleged transgression, please click HERE.
A follow-up article in the Alaska Daily News includes a statement by Streeper explaining his version of the incident. You can read that article HERE.
So what do you think? Was Buddy's behavior worthy of disqualification from one of the most important sprint races of the season? Please post your comment, but please keep it family friendly.
Swanny
Unfortunately, from the video, the crowd witnessing the incident obviously thought they saw/heard something. Even Streeper's explanation doesn't make his actions right - at that stage he would have known that he could have addressed the matter later in another, less public manner. Guess it's things like this that result in the unexpected.
ReplyDeleteHaving watched the video and reading the news articles the race officials did what had to be done and that was to Disqualify him. Costly mistake for Buddy who was on a roll after winning the Stage Race in the Lower 48 and beating Lance Mackey in that race! Hope he apoliges to Luke and moves on and learns from this incident.
ReplyDeleteHaving no bias to either of these mushers since I’m fairly new to following the mushing world, I’d have to say Luke appeared to be in no way in the wrong (other than not knowing a team was approaching him). When he did realize and saw Steeper was coming up ‘Gee’ he tried as hard as he could to get over. While the “punch” did not look very hard, I think it was inappropriate (but I can also understand letting your emotions get to you) but being a professional musher he should have refrained from the hitting and cursing (well first he should have taken his team ‘Haw’). All in all, I think the disqualification was acceptable though I could have seen just a time penalty being acceptable as well.
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